Bishop is in the kitchen when I get home, forming hamburger into patties at the counter. “Hi,” he calls as I throw my bag on the sofa. “How were the prisoners?”
I stand in the kitchen doorway, the same way he did on the second night after our wedding. In most of the ways that count, nothing has changed since then. We haven’t slept together or shared secrets together or done much of anything together, really. But in perhaps the most important way of all, everything’s altered since those first hesitant nights. Because by being the person I come home to, the person who asks me about my day and listens to my answers, Bishop’s become the constant my life revolves around. Even if most of the time we navigate so carefully we might as well be bombs trying not to explode, we are still always there, in each other’s paths. Just waiting for the moments we intersect.
“Awful,” I say. “We met with one who is going to be put out. A guy who hurt a little girl. ” Using euphemism to disguise horror. “But he still begged me to save him. ” My voice is high and tight. “He begged. ”
Bishop snorts. “I bet he did. ”
“That’s all you have to say? Don’t you care about what’s happening to people?”
Bishop flips on the faucet with his forearm, soaping up his hands. “To this guy?” he says. “Not really. The better question is, why do you?” He turns off the water and grabs a dishtowel from the oven door handle.
I huff out air. “I don’t. I mean, not him specifically. But we can’t put people out every time they do something wrong. It’s…barbaric. ”
“Look around, Ivy. The world we live in is barbaric. We just try to hide it with”—he flaps the dish towel toward the counter—“hamburgers on the grill and cute houses. And what’s the alternative? Would it be better to kill them in the electric chair, like they used to? Use up resources we don’t have keeping them alive?”
I roll my eyes. “Now you sound like Victoria. ”
“Victoria has a good point, then. ” Bishop steps closer to me, leans one hip against the counter. “Last winter we lost more than two hundred people, Ivy. Two hundred. Would you rather keep the guy you talked to today alive or one of those people?”
“That’s an unfair question and you know it! Not everyone who is put out has done something like what this guy did. Some people steal bread from the market or refuse to get married. I don’t think it’s a waste of resources to feed those people. We managed to feed them before they committed a crime. We should be able to feed them afterward. ”
“Okay,” Bishop says. “But what about the murderers and rapists? What do we do with them? Saying you want something different isn’t going to cut it. ” His face is as calm as ever, his eyes a thoughtful, liquid green.
“So what are you saying? If someone doesn’t have every single possible answer, it’s stupid to ask the question?” I wish he’d raise his voice so I’d have an excuse to raise mine, release some of this frustration that’s boiling at the base of my spine. I don’t worry any more about offending him or making him mad. He seems able to handle my recklessness with a level of composure my family never mastered.
Bishop doesn’t miss a beat. “No, of course not. But it’s not enough to want things to change without asking what they’re going to change into. ”
“That’s easy for you to say. The president’s son,” I taunt. “Did you ever even think about this stuff before I came along, or did you spend your days splashing around in the river, letting other people worry about justice and what’s right?”
His eyes flash, so fast I think I might have imagined it, because his face stays impassive. “You don’t have a monopoly on worrying about the future, no matter what you might think. ” He throws down the dishtowel. “And at least I don’t need my father to tell me what I believe. ”
I spin away from him and walk down the hall to the bedroom, slamming the door behind me. I cross to the bed and punch a pillow as hard as I can, lift it to my face and scream out my frustration, the cotton dry and bitter in my mouth.
I hide out in a bathroom stall in the basement of the courthouse until my watch says six. I usually leave around five, but I know David, the guard who let Victoria and me in to see Mark Laird, is on duty until six, and I want to find out where he takes his gun at the end of the day. Step three, find out where they keep the guns. That’s one of the facts my father needs to know if he’s going to make a successful bid for power. He’s always said he doesn’t want anyone to get hurt—other than the obvious people, of course—but having control of our government’s limited supply of weapons is going to be vital to his success.
After last night’s argument with Bishop, which left me awake half the night with scathing retorts burning unsaid on my tongue, I woke up determined to take a step forward on the path toward my father’s goal. I refuse to allow Bishop’s words to knock me off course. Callie always says that there’s family, and there’s everyone else. My father is family. And Bishop is everyone else.
I hear a door slam outside the bathroom and a set of heavy footsteps passes in the hall. I uncurl from where I’ve been crouching on the toilet seat, wincing at the tightness in my legs. I peek out the bathroom door and David is turning the corner at the far end of the hall, an area of the basement I’ve never been in before. I tiptoe after him barefoot, my sandals in my hand. It’s eerily quiet down here this time of day, the only sound a faint buzzing from lights above my head and the click of David’s receding footsteps.
I turn the corner cautiously and see David punching in numbers on a keypad set into the wall. When he’s done, he opens the door next to the keypad and goes inside, but he doesn’t let the door close behind him. I can hear his voice and the voice of another man coming from the room.
“Thank God it’s Friday, right?” the unknown man says. He sounds older, his voice gruff.
“You’re telling me,” David says. “Next week is going to be a long one. ”
“Putting them out?”
“On Wednesday. ”
The older man clucks his tongue, but without seeing his face I can’t tell what the noise indicates. Approval? Criticism? I hear the rustling of leather and the clank of metal followed by a heavy thud. David taking off his holster and setting it down. My heart rate picks up, a thin line of sweat beading at my brow. I clutch the folder I’m carrying tighter in my hand—my insurance policy in case I get caught.
“Go ahead and sign it back in,” the older man says.
I hear the scratch of pen on paper and I know I should leave, race down the hall the way I came, but I want more information. There’s a sound I can’t immediately identify, like the whir of a wheel. The turn mechanism on a safe maybe? Against my better judgment, I slide all the way over to the doorway and lean in a fraction of an inch, holding my breath. Both men have their backs to me and stand in front of an open walk-in safe. From where I stand, I can see rows of guns stretching back, floor to ceiling, at least twenty feet. There are handguns, like the one David is turning in and bigger guns, too. All sizes. Shotguns, and even a few assault rifles. These days guns are a theory for most people, not a reality, so they don’t know much about them. But my father taught us to identify the basic types of weapons. Although I’ve never shot a gun, I have no trouble imagining the heft of one in my hand. The older man goes into the safe and sets David’s gun on a metal rack with dozens of guns of the same type.
I move out of the doorway and race-walk away, back down the hall. Once I turn the corner, I take a second to slip my shoes back on and catch my breath. I memorize where I am and where the room is, close my eyes and picture every detail in my mind, try to burn the images of the guns I saw into my closed eyelids.
“Hey, Mrs. Lattimer,” David says, right over my shoulder. “What are you doing here?”